Each family receiving a diagnosis for their child will have their own unique experience, feelings, and perspective. Below is a letter written by a Seattle Public Schools Parent, reflecting their personal journey:

Like you, I am a parent of a child with a disability. His specific diagnosis is unimportant here; what matters is that we are sharing an experience with a complex emotional landscape. One that changes the course of our lives, touches our hearts, and colors all of our relationships.

A diagnosis rarely happens in a moment. It unfolds slowly – as small observations, intuitive insights, and comments from others (often unsolicited) start to coalesce into a picture. A picture that disrupts and demands more that we may feel we can give. Then come the short, sharp days when everything we know but hold at arms length is summarized in a diagnosis, an evaluation, or even a random email. Spelled out in black and white, it suddenly has a weight and significance we are rarely ready for.

At no time in our lives are we more in need of a village to help raise our child. And yet for most of us, one of the first feelings is a profound sense of being alone. Fortunately, you are not. In Seattle Public Schools, more that 7,000 families are traveling a similar path. More than 1,000 District Special Education Teachers, Paraeducators, and related staff choose to come to work each day to support students with disabilities.

Building your child’s village is not easy. It requires engagement when retreat is easier. It demands wholeheartedness when your heart feels broken. It needs trust when you feel betrayed by the universe. This is hard work but the benefits, I believe, far outweigh the effort.

Find a community of parents who understand and support you. Align yourself with people who help you feel healthy, hopeful, and empowered. Make space both for grief and for celebration.

Discover the ordinary in your extraordinary experience. Through repetition, these acts restore our resilience. They bolster our capacity to care for our children, our partners, our communities, and ourselves. They transform hope from a threat to a companion.

We parents form a curious sort of family, thrown together by fate. We are passionate, constantly adapting and growing with our experiences. Together we have strength and wisdom. I welcome all of you as partners, ready to transform the world into a more human, flexible, and dignified place for all of our children.

– Parent of a high school freshman in Seattle Public Schools

Students come first.

We believe…

• It is essential to place the wellbeing of students first in every decision we make.
• The core work of the district is supporting student learning.
• It is our responsibility to ensure that every child, regardless of race, gender, sexual identity, socioeconomic status, language proficiency, learning style, or disability, has the tools to achieve their potential.

Quality instruction and support are the keys to student success.

We believe…

• High quality instruction, built on rigorous and relevant curriculum, measurable outcomes, positive relationships and appropriate professional development is the foundation of student achievement.
• All students should be honored with high expectations in the context of a culture that respects individual differences and includes fair treatment, honesty, openness and integrity.
• We must provide equitable access to educational opportunities.

A safe and welcoming learning environment supports all students.

We believe…

• Our schools should be the heart of our communities, providing a healthy context for growth, discourse and learning.
• Every school should be welcoming of all students and families.

Effective District leadership provides highly functional organizational structure, accountability and community engagement.

We believe…

• We must demonstrate a commitment to continuous improvement through collaboration and thoughtful planning.
• It is our public duty to properly steward District resources through ethical behavior, compliance with the law, transparency and sound fiscal management.
• Community partnerships and family engagement are fundamental to achieving sustained student success.

• We are working proactively to provide a continuum of services for students receiving special education services to enhance integration of the general education curriculum and each students individual education plan.
• We are working across departments to provide the continuum of services equitably across district school sites and programs to guarantee all students fair participation in the district’s assignment process.
• We are working to build effective partnerships and communication with families.
• We are working to educate our whole community about the rights and needs of students with disabilities and to collaborate with school teams to improve teaching practice and outcomes for students.

The concept of a continuum of alternative placements is universal for all school districts under the Washington State Administrative Code (WAC). The Continuum Approach is a service delivery structure specific to K-12 students attending Seattle Public Schools. It couples a flexible delivery approach with a rigorous delivery structure, allowing for predictability and quality simultaneously with individualized programming.

The Continuum Approach is not:

• A series of one size fit all programs that teach a single curriculum to all assigned students.
• Driven by specific diagnostic labels.
• Intended to set artificial limits on any student?s access to the general education

Flexible delivery approach

Our flexible approach derives its resilience from teamwork. By clustering intensive services in continuum schools they can share skills, resources and opportunities that only a team-based delivery provides. Rarely are a student?s needs a perfect fit in one instructional specialty, and student needs flex and change with time. Schools that provide intensive service delivery must be able to embrace flexibility as a constant. This team-based approach creates the diverse instruction and support ecosystem that can grow and change with the students they serve.

Rigorous delivery structure

Our rigorous structure derives its function from thoughtful specialization of case managers coupled with a geographically even, predictable distribution of each specialty across the District. The Continuum Approach provides five Primary Service types, a term specific to Seattle Public Schools. These defined specialties create predictable pathways/options for student school assignment and for teacher professional development.

The Continuum Approach, a service delivery structure, plans for the following:

• A flexible team delivery approach, lead by case managers, designed to provide a truly Individual Education Program (IEP) for each student.
• Defined roles, experience and ongoing training for five specialized types of case managers. Paving the way for consistent, high quality services district-wide.
• Guidelines for completing a network of service sites that, collectively, can serve almost all special education students, about 95%, in or near their home school. These changes will also enhance transparency and predictability around the assignment process for families.
• Guidelines and a pathway for students with very unique assignment needs, about 5%, for whom proximity to home is not the first assignment priority.

As school staff or parents suspect a disability that may be a barrier to a student’s ability to access the general education curriculum, they should contact the school principal to initiate a referral for special education services. The principal will direct the parent through the initial stages of the referral process.

The supervisor oversees the schools on their learning team, leads the early childhood programs and coordinates and leads the private school services. These centrally based leaders work to support schools through the training and support of two program specialists.

Supervisors monitor school practices for compliance with district policy and state law, review compliance data, provide training and support to program specialists, establish policy and procedure in collaboration with the special education leadership team and assist in central level decision-making.

Program specialists consult, coach, offer guidance, help problem solve and support schools in the IEP process as needed. The majority of their week is spent in the schools talking with and working alongside school staff, meeting with principals, providing support for unique needs and helping to determine program and service models for the schools. Program specialists offer insight and knowledge toward decisions around programs, budget and departmental procedures.

Please visit our contact us page for Special Education contact information.

School-based discipline for a child is highly unique and decisions are dictated by the factors present within each situation. The Seattle Public Schools (SPS) discipline website provides an overview of the policies and procedures around discipline for all children, and offers a special section devoted to children served in special education.

For questions or concerns regarding a disciplinary issue occurring within a specific school, contact your school principal. For further assistance, contact your regional supervisor.

The first person to resolve any concerns that you might have is your child’s case manager. This will usually be his/her special education teacher. Parents/guardians can always request a parent-teacher conference. If a resolution is not reached there, the next person with whom to discuss your concerns is your school assistant principal/principal.

If your concern is around a special education issue and you are not able to resolve it at the school level, you may talk to the special education program specialist or the regional supervisor assigned to your school. To find out who your program specialist or the supervisor is for your school, you may call the special education office.

If you feel that your issue is not being resolved, you may contact the district ombudsperson.